Toward Sustainability and Green Climate: Innovative Multifunctional Cementitious Composites Based on Mineral Wool Wastes and Low-Cost Nanoparticles

Summary

The environmental toll of cement production, including substantial resource and energy consumption as well as high emissions of greenhouse-gas, highlights the need for alternative sustainable building materials. This project proposes to advocate for a shift towards a sustainable and green climate by developing innovative multifunctional cementitious composites based on mineral wool wastes (basaltic wool and glass wool) and some low-cost nano-particles. Generally, landfills are the common solution for the disposal of mineral wool wastes, requiring logistics arrangements and larger dumping areas, increasing disposal costs. Moreover, they cause a series of environmental issues. From a chemical point of view, these waste mainly contain SiO2, Al2O3, and a low percentage of CaO, Fe2O3, MgO and Na2O; therefore, it is expected to act as supplementary cementitious precursors. Accordingly, finding the optimal methods for using high percentages of rock wool and glass wool, reaching 50 wt. % in the developing new pozzolanic-cement and geopolymeric-composites may fulfil the main target of this project. The fresh (water consistency, setting time, workability, heat of hydration and soundness) and hardened (compressive strength and dry shrinkage) properties will be investigated to ensure the developed composites achieve the main cement requirements. The obtained results will be compared with natural basalt-based cementitious composites. For special structural applications that require superior mechanical performance, the microstructure of the developed materials will be modified using different curing regimes (hydrothermal and microwave curing) or adding laboratory-prepared low-cost nano-particles and layered double hydroxide (LDH). The phase composition (using XRD and TGA/DSC), texture characteristics (using BET/BJH models), morphology/microstructure (using SEM/EDX/EDX-mapping) for hydration products and geopolymeric phases before and after modifications will be examined. Finally, the optimum mix-design and modification technique will be employed to prepare green mortar used in multifunctional applications via investigating its efficiency in resisting elevated temperatures up to 1000°C, shielding hazardous gamma-ray, preventing microbial growth, mitigating the corrosion of reinforced steel and thermal insulation. It is expected that the developed building materials will achieve the sustainability concept (low cement consumption, cost and carbon footprint, as well as massive waste disposal) and strongly contribute to the production of high-performance and multifunctional building materials.

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